A Note on Egyptian Torture

By Brian Till

If you want a serious interrogation, you send a
prisoner to Jordan. If you want them to be tortured, you send them to
Syria. If you want someone to disappear - never to see them again - you
send them to Egypt.

Yesterday, Human Rights Watch released a report
on torture and impunity in the now defunct
Egyptian prison system. It's worth a glance.

Perhaps the most
famous alumnus of the system is Ayman al-Zawahiri, al-Qaeda's number two.
He spent the first ten years of his life in the wealthy Cairo suburb of
Heliopolis, the same stomping ground of a young Gamal
Mubarak, the former heir to Cairo now believed to be hiding in
London.

Zawahiri, a physician, was the son of two of the cities most
prominent families. In 1981, following the assassination of President
Anwar Sadat, Zawahiri was arrested. He had been plotting to topple the
regime since he was 15. He opposed the assassination, instead
suggesting a coup was the best method of attaining power, but played a
small role in the plot, nonetheless.

Lawrence Wright, in his
Pulitzer Prize winning The
Looming Tower, describes a famous scene from the ensuing mass
trial, which dragged on for three years:

In his one-man play, My Trip to al Qaeda, which was later turned into
an HBO documentary, Wright elaborated on the use of dogs -- specifically,
how they were trained to rape prisoners.

Zawahiri is part of a lineage of giants in the modern jihadi movement
who were further radicalized by their years in prison.There's also
Sayyid Qutb, the critical thinker in the evolution of the Muslim
Brotherhood's ideology; the blind sheik Omar
Abdel-Rahman whose terror network Gamaat Islamiya killed scores,
and who, years later, inspired the 1993 World Trade Center bombers in
New York mosques; and Abu
Musab al-Zarqawi, who, despite pronounced differences with al-Qaeda
central, led the organization's ill-fated franchise in Iraq and helped
drive the nation into civil war. Zarqawi purportedly
lost his toenails in a Jordanian prison due to torture and infection.

The effect on others is less clear. The brutish Zarqawi's more intellectual
guide and prison
mate, Muhammad al-Maqdisi -- who has made as significant a
contribution to the canon as any living theologian, and who has recently
turned his eyes to Russia
-- has maintained a rather even keel across his numerous prison terms. Many in online forums have even accused him of weakening
his views over time. A number of Saudi clerics, too, have calmed their
views after terms in prison.

The narrative is simply more
complex than a direct correlation. And, since 9/11, a number of regimes
in the region have become quite serious about counter-radicalization.
Carnegie's Chris Boucek's report
on the Saudi program is an important read, and Ashour
Omar's study of Egyptian and Algerian successes and failures is
worth the time for those who are curious.

Regardless, there's
little disputing that for the thuggish foot soldiers of this movement,
brutal experiences in Arab jails, hours spent alongside others of
similar ilk behind bars, and, quite often, time spent under the tutelage
of fellow prisoners with serious religious credentials, has played a
significant role in spurring the violence we've seen manifest under the
guise of Islam.

In the immortal words of Johnny Depp channeling
George Jung in the film Blow: "Danbury wasn't a prison, it was a crime
school. I went in with a Bachelor of marijuana, came out with a
Doctorate of cocaine."